The Utah Black Hawk War
1847-1873
The "Savage" Fallacy Debunked
| Chief Black Hawk was not a rebel; he embodied unity and Indigenous spirituality. Digging up his remains for entertainment is not just disrespectful but violent dehumanization. Turning a person who sought peace in his final hours into a display object strips away his humanity in death as it did in life. |
The definitive cause of the Utah Black Hawk War that began in 1849 when Brigham Young ordered the "extermination" of the Timpanogos Nation, which triggered more than 150 violent confrontations and more than eight traumatizing massacres. The Timpanogos endured nearly 30 years of unimaginable hardship, including widespread starvation, a devastating smallpox epidemic, forced removal from their homeland, forced assimilation into Mormon culture, and boarding schools with graveyards. These events led to a 90% reduction in their population and inflicted permanent damage to their culture. By 1865, only two of the original seven Chiefs remained: Antonga Black Hawk, who became the war Chief, and Tabby, principal Chief of the Timpanogos Nation.
"Western society has historically adopted the belief that humans possess the right to dominate plants, animals, and even other humans. This materialist perspective has contributed to economic, ecological, social, and moral crises, leading to the decline of various cultures." -Carlos Barrios, Mayan Elders Council.
Sadly, scholars, historians and writers of Utah's Black Hawk War often overlook the age-old Indigenous American worldview, which centers on connection, relationship, and unity. This perspective holds that all people are fundamentally one and direct living descendants of our Creator. Lakota Chief Joseph expressed this when he said, "We have no qualms about color. It doesn't mean anything." In essence, Indigenous peoples' worldview affirms the oneness of humanity.
Native American worldviews are deeply holistic, seeing all life—human, animal, and nature—as interconnected, sacred, and full of spiritual meaning. They teach that everyone is a direct descendant of our Creator. Honesty, love, respect, courage, truth, wisdom, and humility are values that Indigenous peoples have practiced for generations. See National Museum of the American Indian where I first learned the "seven sacred teachings."
Claims that the land was conquered and that Native Americans should simply move on, or that blame is shared equally, reflect colonial and imperial thinking, which is deeply flawed.
For two decades, I looked past the smoke of the Black Hawk War to find the heartbeat of a man's mission for peace, using his final breaths to travel nearly 200 miles to plead for the very thing his enemies couldn't grasp: Humanity. I am of coarse reffering to Black Hawk's mission of peace. I learned what it means to be human, as seen through the eyes of Chief Black Hawk. When the world was created, the Creator touched it with his hand, and so it is sacred and spiritual. The Land is our home, our mother, nourishing all her children. The Land is sacred and belongs to all who inhabit it.
Traditionally, historians of the Black Hawk War have focused on the Latter-day Saint (Mormon) settlers. Migration to the Salt Lake Valley was viewed through the lens of "Manifest Destiny" and religious prophecy. Settlers believed they were establishing "Zion" in a promised land. In their view, this provided moral and divine justification for the forced removal and assimilation of Indigenous people.
My great-grandfather, Peter Gottfredson, was friends with the Timpanogos during the 1860s, who called Peter “the sheep captain.” Being about the same age, he formed a close friendship with Black Hawk. Peter's book Indian Depredations in Utah is a compilation of firsthand accounts of the Black Hawk War, a work that has been frequently cited by historians for decades.
Following in the footsteps of my great-grandfather, twenty years I spent studying Indigenous perspectives across the Americas, especially those of the Timpanogos, Southern Paiute, and Ute. While many see the conflict as a war over borders, it was also a struggle between exclusion, represented by Zion and Manifest Destiny, and interconnection, represented by Indigenous unity. Let my research show that the Black Hawk War was not only about territory, but as George Tinker put it, the human condition. See Phillip B Gottfredson's Biography
The Ideological Collision
Despite the numerous attempts by Timpanogos leaders to live in peace, Mormon settlers treated them with much severity; one of the most notable examples is the robbery of Chief Black Hawk's grave in 1919. On September 26, 1870, his loving kin honorably laid him to rest on a hillside 
overlooking Spring Lake, the place of his birth—just 49 years passed when Mormons dug up his mortal remains and then exhibited them in the window of a hardware store in Spanish Fork, Utah, and then on Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City for some sixty years for amusement. This is the culture of settler colonialism.
Black Hawk was not a rebel; he embodied unity and Indigenous spirituality. Digging up his remains for entertainment is not just disrespectful but violent dehumanization. Turning a person who sought peace in his final hours into a display object strips away his humanity in death as it did in life.
The Black Hawk War’s true irony lies in ongoing dehumanization and desecration. While Timpanogos families were told 'Thou shalt not steal,' the settler-colonial state committed deeper theft—not just of land and possessions but of dignity, sacredness, and personhood. By displaying Black Hawk’s remains for public amusement, settlers did more than take land. They denied an Indigenous leader the right to exist, even in death, as a person deserving rest. See Chief Black Hawk's Grave Robbed For Amusement
Settler colonialism creates a system of domination built on supremacy and taking land by force. Yet Jacob Hamblin’s 1853 remark, "The whites who infest the country are far more troublesome than the Indians," reveals a striking contradiction. As a colonist leading expansion into Indigenous land, Hamblin was himself a main cause of the "infestation" he criticized. His religious sympathy for the Indians kept him from seeing that he was helping to build the very system he found so troubling.
This is how settler-colonial thinking worked in practice. The 'commandments' acted as a cover, hiding a system that viewed Timpanogos lives, land, and even their remains as property—objects to be taken, displayed, and used. As Will Bagley points out in his book, Kindom in the West, Utah's history built on the stolen dignity of ancestors celebrates only its own conquest.
Steven T. Newcomb, of the Indigenous Law Institute and author of Pagans in the Promised Land, wrote: "Indian nations have been denied their most basic rights ... simply because, at the time of Christendom's arrival in the Americas, they did not believe in the God of the Bible, and did not believe that Jesus Christ was the true Messiah... This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the Faithful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy Scriptures to take it from them, being idolaters, by reason of their idolatry and sin, to put them all to the knife, leaving no living thing save maidens and children, their cities robbed and sacked, their walls and houses leveled to the earth. This is the basis for the denial of Indian rights in federal Indian law and remains as true today as it was in 1823." See The Doctrine of Discovery
Was it Black Hawk's War? Not according to Timpanogos historian Phillip B 
Gottfredson, the Timpanogos were a prosperous and thriving Nation of businesspeople and traders in horses, silver, and various goods. The Timpanogos were not a warring people. There wasn't any 'Indian Problem' until the Mormons came. Then, there was a Mormon problem. When Brigham Young ordered the extermination of the Timpanogos, it was Brigham Young's War. Stereotyping Indigenous people as being heathens and savages comes straight out of colonial fantasy land. See Timpanogos Nation Biography & The Utah Black Hawk War
Beginning in 1847, at the rate of some three thousand a month, new Mormon colonists arrived in Utah Territory, and sprawled out into the ancestral home of the Timpanogos, disrupting the natural order of all living things. They killed deer, elk, and buffalo and depleted the fish population in the Timpanogos River (later known as the Provo River) and Timpanogos Lake (later known as Utah Lake). They diverted and polluted water sources, the environment that First Nations solely depended upon for food, medicines, and life-sustaining necessities. With the rapid increase in the Mormon population, agricultural development, and barbed wire, the Timpanogos soon ran out of territory for a sanctuary vital to their culture, a gross injustice that we cannot overlook. Mormon settlers deliberately reshaped the region’s population, land use, and power dynamics.
Brigham Young's order has never been rescinded, and it can be argued that it continues to this day.
Professor Dr. Daniel McCool University of Utah summed it up succinctly: "We took from them almost all their land—the reservations are just a tiny remnant of traditional tribal homelands. We tried to take from them their hunting rights, their fishing rights, the timber on their land. We tried to take from them their water rights. We tried to take from them their culture, their religion, their identity, and perhaps most importantly, we tried to take from them their freedom." See Utah's Black Hawk War Legacy
Utah historians have never cared enough to consult the Timpanogos Nation; For example, Black Hawk’s name was not Antonga or Black Hawk, nor was he a chief of the Ute Tribe. “Antonga” was most likely a nickname given to him by his Spanish-speaking neighbors. His birth name was Nu'inch. Brigham Young called him Black Hawk when he was about 15 years old while being held captive at Fort Utah. By the 1860s, the memory of the 1832 Black Hawk War in Illinois was still fresh in the minds of the senior LDS leadership (who had lived through those conflicts in the Midwest).
John Wesley Powell pointed out in his journals. The Timpanogos Nation is recognized as a band of the Snake-Shoshone, and, contrary to misinformed historians who believe otherwise, the Tipanogos have no connection to the Ute Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. As one well-known Utah historian put it, “You can’t strecth a rats ass over a rain barrell.” See The Timpanogos Nation is Snake-Shoshone.
"Until the lion tells its story, the hunt will always glorify the hunter." This proverb introduces an essential question: who is more qualified to tell the story of Mormon colonialism in Utah than its victims?
In 2015, Mary Murdock Meyer, Chief Executive of the Timpanogos Nation, initiated a collaboration with Phillip B Gottfredson to accurately document and share the Timpanogos Nation's version and personal account of settler colonialism. Their partnership aimed to ensure the Timpanogos experiences and perspectives were faithfully represented.
As Phillip emphasizes, "The Timpanogos perspective is not a mere footnote in the Black Hawk War narrative; it's a pivotal account that offers a firsthand view of what Mormon colonialism looks like." Together, Mary and Phillip embarked on the ground breaking book My Journey to Understand Black Hawk's Mission of Peace. This historical milestone unveils the Timpanogos account of the War for the first time, thereby giving a much-needed voice to the Timpanogos and enriching our understanding of their history.
The Black Hawk War in Utah
I care very deeply about the Timpanogos Nation. I want to Quote from the book Black 
Hawk's Mission of Peace, one of many heart-to-heart conversations I had with Perry Murdock, a Council member of the Timpanogos Nation and a direct descendant of Black Hawk's uncle, Chief Wakara, Perry described the severity of the trauma his ancestors experienced.
"Every day, we are reminded of what our ancestors went through. Our families were torn apart. Children murdered, the old, the women, all those who were brutally murdered and made to suffer and die from violence, then disease, then starvation, our ancestors' graves torn up, the land destroyed, it was genocide plain and simple. Why? What did we do? We didn't do anything. We were living in peace. We were happy. Our children were happy. We loved each other. We cared for each other. And when the Mormons came, we tried to help them. Then they tried to take everything away from us. They wanted it all. They wanted to exterminate us, wipe us off the face of the earth. Why? For our land? For our oil? Now we have nothing."
Perry also noted, "... the Mormons got involved and lied to the Utes about us, and they lied to us about the Utes. They made us so we didn't trust each other and we began to fight each other. They didn't care about us, all they wanted us to do was fight each other, tear us apart, take our land..."
Mary Murdock Meyer, Perry's sibling, and a direct descendant of Chief Arapeen, a brother of Wakara, wrote, "As Chief Executive of the Timpanogos Nation, I speak for the people when I ask why? We fed you when you were hungry. We helped you when you did not understand our lands. Why then were we forgotten?" Visit The Timpanogos Nation Website
Quoting Timpanogos Chief 'Walker' in a official Statement to Indian Agent M. S. MARTENAS July 6, 1853. "They were friendly for a short time until they became strong in numbers, then their conduct and treatment towards the Indians changed—they were not only treated unkindly—they have been treated with much severity—they have been driven by this population from place to place—settlements have been made on all their hunting grounds in the valleys, and the graves of their fathers have been torn up by the whites...," said Chief 'Walker'. See Chief Walker's Statement to Indian Agent M. S. MARTENAS July 6, 1853
The following are just eleven examples out of 150 events that were extremely damaging and traumatizing for the Timpanogos during the years of the Black Hawk War, 1849 to 1873. See The Black Hawk War Timeline for a complete list of events and related material.
The Battle Creek Canyon Massacre - Pleasant Grove, Utah
The Battle Creek Massacre in the winter of 1848-49 was a prelude to the Black Hawk War. Brigham Young falsely accused a small group of the Timpanogos Nation of stealing his horses. This led to the tragic deaths of three innocent individuals and the capture of a vulnerable young boy named Nu'intz, whom Brigham Young would later call Black Hawk. See The Battle Creek Massacre
The Murder of Old Bishop
Brutality in Utah's Native American history are numerous; the murder of a Timpamogos elderly man, the Mormons called Old Bishop, occurred on the 1st of August, 1849, at Fort Utah in Provo. Accused of stealing a shirt from a clothesline, he was murdered in cold blood, disemboweled, his stomach filled with rocks, and thrown in the Provo River. See The Murder of Old Bishop
Fort Utah Massacre
January 1850, Brigham Young orders the extermination the Timpanogos. The Mormon vigilantes helped themselves taking the belongings from the dead, while Bill Hickman, with knife in hand, hacked Old Elk's head off his frozen body. He said Jim Bridger had offered him a hundred dollars for the head. Old Elk's wife refused to be taken captive. See Fort Utah; Building the Fort
Massacre at Table Point
January 1850, “The violence shifted from warfare to killing.” After disarming a large band of Timpanogos at Table Point near the southern edge of Utah Lake, the militiamen shot them down in cold blood... then decapitated..." See Fort Utah; Table Point
Mountain Meadows Massacre
In the Mountain Meadows Massacre, 1857, Major John D. Lee of the Nauvoo Legion led a ragtag band of Latter-day Saints disguised as "Indians" in an assault on a wagon train from Arkansas, murdering 120 men, women, and children. The LDS Church unfairly blamed the Paiute. In 2007, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, after decades of denial, finally confessed to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. In 1960, the late Church president David O. Mckay said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." See Mountain Meadows Massacre
The Bear River Massacre
In the Bear River Massacre of 1863, over 493 shoshonee were slaughtered, led by the unashamed Colonel Patrick Edward Connor. Brigham young supplied Connor with troops and equipment. SeeBear River Massacre
The Grass Valley Massacre
Timpanogos's account of the Grass Valley Massacre 1865 is that when the soldiers first approached their camp, the old Chief showed a soldier a paper from the Bishop of Glenwood that said they were friendly and no harm would come to them. He was the first one shot, and the soldier who shot him then beheaded him with his sword. See Grass Valley Massacre
The Circleville Massacre
Then at the peak of the Black Hawk War in 1866, Bishop William Jackson Allred led the Circleville Massacre of the Koosharem Paiutes. Twenty-six men, women, and children's throats were slit and buried in a mass grave.See Circleville Massacre
The Gravely Ford Battle
In June of 1866, Black Hawk's father Sanpitch, had been held captive for 6 months while his captors were hoping to force Black Hawk into submission, but then Sanpitch managed to escape briefly and Dolf Bennett slit his throat. In the same month, Black Hawk was shot in the gut by James E. Snow at the Gravelly Ford Battle while trying to rescue a fallen warrior, Whitehorse. See Black Hawk Wounded at Gravely Ford
The Old Peace Treaty Tree in Ephram, Utah
1866, one of Black Hawk's few Mormon friends, Canute Peterson of Ephraim, paid a visit to the ailing leader in Cedar City—taking sugar, hams, bread, beads, molasses, tea, coffee, tobacco, flour, medicines, and clothing. Black Hawk promised Canute unconditional friendship for his kindness. See The Old Peacetreaty Tree
Congress Never Ratified A Single Treaty In Utah
The late University of Utah historian Floyd O'Neil describes, "There were no treaties made between the Indian people of Utah and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Only 'agreements' were made. At best, these agreements were divisive, designed to trick the Indians into giving up their land. They were not legally binding."
Despite popular belief that the Spanish Fork Treaty of 1865 brought an end to the war, the fact is that it was never ratified by Congress. However, Congress expressed a preference, "We would rather the Indians to have the land than the Mormons. The treaty identifies who the Indians of Utah are. "See The Black Hawk War Treaties
Hidalgo Treaty of 1848
Mormon settlers arrived on the Wasatch Front of the Rockies in 1847 during the Mexican-American War. In February 1848, the United States signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the Mexican-American War. In 1850 Utah territory was created which included parts of Colorado when it was admitted to the Union in 1876. Utah remained a territory until it was admitted to the Union in 1896.
The significance of the treaty is that it preserved certain Indian rights. According to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, "Mexican negotiators won from the United States multiple promises that Indian land rights would continue as they had been under Mexican law."
Timpanogos' Indigenous Treaty Rights
Disregarding the Timpanogos' Indigenous treaty rights, Mormon leadership drew their power from Manifest Destiny. Ignoring not just the Hildalgo Treaty, also article 6 of the Constitution that clearly states treaties are the supreme law of the land. LDS Apostle George A. Smith ordered the church's private militia to "remove the Indian people from their land," saying Indigenous people have "no rights to their land." In the name of 'Righteous Dominion' Brigham Young spent over a million dollars in church funds, the equivalent of $35 million today, to "exterminate" the Timpanogos, then billed Congress for reimbursement. See 1869, Brigham Young Bills Congress For Getting Rid of Utah Indians
Brigham Young's extermination order prioritized the erasure of the Timpanogos, as shown when he famously said, "I say go [and] kill them…Tell Dimick Huntington to go and kill them—also Barney Ward—let the women and children live if they behave themselves…We have no peace until the men [are] killed off—never treat the Indian as your equal." This directive signaled an explicit policy of violence, underscoring the gravity of Young's stance. Source BYC, Microfilm reel 80, box 47, folder 6. Farmer, Jared (2008). On Zion's Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674027671 See Brigham Young's Extermination Order No. 2
The Black Hawk War in Utah is a perfect example of settler colonialism. Cornell Law School defines settler colonialism as "a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population."
For example, the LDS version of the Utah Black Hawk War, historians are claiming the war began in 1865, omitting almost 20 years of earlier settler violence toward the Timpanogos. Historian Michael Quinn called this version “a mixture of platitudes, half-truths, omissions, and plausible denials,” and he was excommunicated for speaking out. See Phillip's Timeline of the Black Hawk War in Utah. Pay particular attention to the number of events that led up to 1865.
The Logic of Settler Colonialism
Tribal identity in the United States has been persistently targeted for erasure through deliberate federal policies such as the Indian Boarding School system, the Dawes Act, and the Termination and Relocation programs. These measures aimed to assimilate Native Americans by breaking up Tribal lands, suppressing Indigenous languages and cultures, and encouraging the abandonment of traditional communities. The lasting effects include generational trauma, loss of cultural knowledge, and ongoing efforts by Tribes to reclaim their heritage and rights. See The Dawes Act 1887
Timpanogos Nation Chief Executive Mary Meyer notes that Timpanogos children are taught histories that do not align with their own understanding. This situation does not foster genuine education, but presents difficult choices. These students are taught to accept the claim that the Timpanogos are Ute or else it may challenge their academic success. This needs to end. See Utah Schools Ignore True Indian History
Indian Removal Act & Manifest Destiny 1830
Forced removal is the hallmark of settler colonialism taking hold in America with Andrew Jackson's systematic 200.jpg)
Indian Removal Act of 1830 that opened the way to the forced relocation of Native Americans. It became known as "The Trail of Tears." The 1832 Supreme Court Ruling declared the Indian Removal Act unconstitutional, but the damage already caused to First Nations was irreversible. In time, the Doctrine of Discovery would become Manifest Destiny to justify European Expansion further ignoring Indian Rights all together all under the banner of Christianity and 'righteous dominion.' See how Manifest Destiny opens the way to western expansion.
When the Civil War ended in 1865, the United States government called for exterminating tribes who resisted giving up their land, and the Government turned its attention toward Western expansion and the U.S. military to 'Indian' fighting. See CONGRESSIONAL ACTS to understand how our government has mistreated Native Americans by creating convoluted laws to subjugate and have dominion over a people who are Indigenous to America.
Forced Assimilation
Highly publicized massacres of 'Indians' brought the attention of philanthropic groups. American humanitarians proposed a new solution to the 'Indian problem' by eliminating 'Indianness' through acculturation. Christian reformers argued that 'if Indians were assimilated, the Indian problem would vanish.'
The Rocky Mountain News paper quoted Brigham Young saying, "If you want to get rid of the Indians try and civilize them."
In the 1860s, the U.S. adopted a Peace Policy, gradually shifting toward a more peaceful approach, and genocide of Native Americans was officially discouraged. The Peace Policy meant making them wards of the government, forcing Native tribes to reservations and boarding schools to assimilate them into white culture, thus eliminating Native peoples bloodlessly. The intended effect of the Peace Policy was to prevent the rampant slaughter of Native Americans.
Christianization, comercialization, and civilization, became the means to 
assimilate tribal peoples so that they could be integrated and absorbed by mainstream society. Example, the LDS church converted many of Utah's Native Americans to Mormonism, according to church doctrine, and in so doing, the so-called "loathsome" Indians would become a "white and delightsome people." They would be forgiven of the sins of their forefathers. (Book of Mormon 2 Nephi 5:21-23) According to church doctrine, the nature of the dark skin was a curse, and the cause was the Lord; the reason that the Lamanites (Indians) "had hardened their hearts against him, (God)," and the punishment was to make them "loathsome" unto God's people who had white skins. See Only In The Land Of The Lamanites.
Suppose you were Indigenous person and lucky enough to survive settler colonialism. In that case, you are confined to a reservation and made to depend on government-run Indian agencies for scarce and sometimes contaminated commodities to survive. Your children are taken away and sent to boarding house schools with graveyards, all under the slogan "Kill the Indian, and save the man." Watch our heartbreaking video on boarding schools.
Mormon Legislature Sanctioned Slavery 1850
In the years 1850-52, the all-Mormon legislature sanctioned slavery of not only Blacks but Indians, stating that a white man need only have possession of an Indian for that Indian to be enslaved, and this included children. See Mormon's Slavery
Brigham Young blames his followers he described as "stupid, cork for brains and wooden shoes." In his speech in the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, on April 6, 1854, he said, "If the inhabitants of this Territory, my brethren, had never condescended to reduce themselves to the practices of the Indians, (as few of them have,) to their low, degraded condition, and in some cases even lower, there never would have been any trouble between us and our red neighbors." See Brigham Young's Discourses.
The Denver Rocky Mountain newspaper quoted Brigham Young saying, "You can get rid of more Indians with a sack of flour than a keg of powder." Clearly his intention was to "get rid" of the indigenous population. Mormon colonialism had less to do with saving the "heathens" from hell, and more to do with getting rich.
If you believe that our critique of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has been severe, consider the experiences of the First Nation peoples of Utah who faced extermination. Reflect on the irreversible harm inflicted upon their lives and spirits over the past 150 years. Equally significant, consider the descendants of those who perpetrated these acts. They also require healing. See The Silent Victims of the Utah Black Hawk War.
"The wasnt any 'Indian problem' until the Mormons came, then there was a Mormon problem."
